Focus: Reconstruction and Resettlement: An opportunity for long-term development

Resettling and reintegrating refugees in Eritrea

Caritas resettlement project, Kambodian, Tadjikistan

Dissemination of adobe technology in a housing reconstruction programme in Peru

Reconstruction in Alto Mayo, Peru

Coping with disasters

Review

WAS: new jobs with old machines

The Voi Tanzania / Bondeni upgrading project

Artefact

CAS news

RAS

WAS: new jobs with old machines

Early 1992, a set of old and redundant machines and moulds for
the production of hollow concrete blocks, pumice bricks, concrete curb stones,
pipes and slabs were collected and rehabilitated for new use, as an initiative
of WAS. These machines and moulds were to be discarded as scrap, in order to
regain workshop space at a building contractors firm. About the same time,
WAS received an enquiry from PROGRESO, a nongovernmental organization in EI
Salvador, which is involved in low-Income housing and resettlement of refugees
and displaced persons in EI Salvador. They asked for possibilities of locating
used building materials producing equipment for their programme.

After the machines and moulds were derusted and restored to full
use by a German metalwork training centre, Aus-bildungsverbund Metall (AVM), a
nonprofit organization with which WAS/GATE has been in contact for many years,
and which is dedicated to training young people as well as long-term unemployed
persons, they were shipped to EI Salvador and handed over to PROGRESO for use in
a building materials co-operative in Agua Caliente, near Suchitoto. There the
equipment is now being used by a group of young people actively producing hollow
concrete blocks, pumice bricks, pipes, etc, as can be seen from the photos.

The pumice brick press (above) was shown in BASIN NEWS No. 9 how
it looked before rehabilitation. It is a beautifully made and robust machine,
manufactured in Germany in 1910. The concrete block press (left), which was also
manufactured in our country, dates back to 1948. The rehabilitated equipment is
now fully operational, can easily be maintained by the co-operative in EI
Salvador and will be producing good quality building materials for refugee
settlements for many years to come.